1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a method of manufacturing a silicon optoelectronic device, a silicon optoelectronic device manufactured by the method and an image input and/or output apparatus using the silicon optoelectronic device.
2. Description of the Related Art
An advantage of using a silicon semiconductor substrate is that it provides excellent reliability and allows a highly integrated density of the logic device, an operation device, and a drive device on the substrate. Also, a silicon semiconductor material can be used to fabricate a highly integrated circuit at much lower cost than a compound semiconductor material, due to the use of inexpensive silicon. That is why many integrated circuits use silicon as their basic material.
In this regard, current research into the fabrication of silicon-based light-emitting devices aims to make them compatible with integrated circuits and to obtain inexpensive photoelectronic devices.
The present applicant has disclosed a silicon optoelectronic device in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/122,421, filed on Apr. 16, 2002. The silicon optoelectronic device includes an ultra-shallow doping region to form a quantum structure in a p-n junction of a silicon-based substrate. In this device, a period of surface flections i.e. microdefects enhancing wavelength selectivity, is formed by self-assembly under specific oxidation conditions and a specific diffusion process. For this reason, uniform production and reproduction of the microdefects are very difficult.
As described in the U.S. application Ser. No. 10/122,421, the wavelength of the silicon optoelectronic device having the light emitting characteristics or/and light receiving characteristics due to the quantum structure formed by an ultra-shallow diffusion process is determined by the period of the microdefects, which is a microcavity length. Thus, the microdefects must be repeatedly arranged with a specific period to select the desired wavelength band.